PM Putin confirms Russian GP for 2014

14 October 2010 – Following reports suggesting as much earlier today, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has confirmed that Formula 1 will travel to Russia for the first time in 2014. With a contract having been signed by F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone on Thursday, Black Sea resort city Sochi will host the event until at least 2020.

Although it welcomed its first national driver in Renault’s Vitaly Petrov earlier this season, the largest country in the world is yet to hold a place on the F1 calendar.

However, that will change in four years’ time as Sochi makes its F1 debut in the same year it hosts the Winter Olympics, with the track winding its way around the Olympic Park.

“We have reached an agreement with the principal owner of Formula 1 that Sochi would host the Russian Grand Prix from 2014 to 2020,” Putin is quoted as saying by the BBC, after Ecclestone travelled to the Eurasian nation today.

The Russian race is the latest in a string of new events on the calendar, with next weekend’s inaugural Korean Grand Prix being the first ahead of a premier visit to India next season and the United States’ Austin, Texas in 2012. A race on the streets of Italian capital city Rome also remains on the cards.

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